Polishing the loading gate/scraped cartridges

[jpuke]

I keep running into a problem with scraped cartridges in my 1895 (45/70) because the loading gate is so sharp.  It shaves small amounts of lead off the bullets as well.  I took the whole thing apart last week and very, very lightly polished the loading gate hoping this would help but it hasn't. 

Do any of you have experience with fixing this?  Which part of the loading cycle is more violent on the cartridge - putting it into the magazine or the ride out of the magazine and into the chamber? 

I like to shoot paper patched bullets during deer season but I find the patches get nicked by the loading gate (or the part that raises the cartridge into the chamber) and I'd like to fix it if I can. 

[Winter Hawk]

Is it the loading gate, or could it be when it enters the chamber?  I seem to remember that sometimes the bullet rides on the edge of the chamber going in...

-Kees-

[bilmac]

I would think that the forward edge of the port that you stick the bullets through is the culprit, not the loading gate itself. You might want to think twice about slicking it up though, My model 94 357 will not hold the cartridges in the loading port as you load them. You stick them in and the mag tube spring forces them back out. As a consequence it is pretty hard to load, you have to hold the previous cartridge until you can back it up with with the next bullet. I suspect the sharp edges around the loading port are that way to keep cartridges in place as they are being loaded.